Today was rumored to be one of the days that NASA would announce the winner or winners of contracts for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). Barring an unlikely last-second [...]]]>

Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft approaches the International Space Station in this illustration. (credit: Boeing)

Today was rumored to be one of the days that NASA would announce the winner or winners of contracts for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). Barring an unlikely last-second announcement, that won’t happen, but NASA did have some things to say yesterday about commercial crew.

In a press release Thursday, NASA highlighted a “summer of advancements” with the three companies that have Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) awards from NASA, as well as Blue Orion, which is working on an unfunded extension of its earlier Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev-2) award. “We have a set of detailed criteria drawn up so we can adequately evaluate what they are doing and they can tell us where adjustments fit in with their system’s overall success,” NASA commercial crew program manager Kathy Lueders said in the statement. “It’s exactly what we had in mind when we kicked off this effort four years ago.”

Perhaps the biggest development was word that Boeing had completed its final two CCiCap milestones, including an integrated critical design review (CDR) of its CST-100 spacecraft, which Boeing heralded with its own release. “The challenge of a CDR is to ensure all the pieces and sub-systems are working together,” John Mulholland, manager of commercial crew efforts at Boeing, said in the release. “Now we look forward to bringing the CST-100 to life.”

The other two CCiCap awardees, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and SpaceX, still have some milestones on their agreements that may not be completed until early next year. SNC recently completed a review of its Dream Chaser engineering test article with NASA officials in advance of its second free flight, planned for later this year. SpaceX, meanwhile, is working through some reviews before it performs two abort tests of its Dragon V2 spacecraft. Earlier this month, SpaceX’s Garrett Reisman said those tests, one from ground level and the other in flight on a Falcon 9, are planned for November and January, respectively.

All three companies, meanwhile, are anxiously awaiting when NASA will award CCtCap contracts. Thursday’s NASA release offered no new guidance: “In August or September, NASA plans to award one or more contracts that will provide the agency with commercial services to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station by the end of 2017.”

The long-awaited decision on which company or companies will win contracts from NASA for the next phase of the [...]]]>

Elon Musk stands in front of the Dragon V2 spacecraft unveiled at SpaceX on May 29. SpaceX is one of three leading contenders for the next phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. (credit: J. Foust)

The long-awaited decision on which company or companies will win contracts from NASA for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program can be expected by the end of this month, according to one report last night.

Charles Lurio, the well-connected publisher of The Lurio Report newsletter about the commercial space industry, tweeted Thursday night that he expected NASA to announce the awardees of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts either next Friday, August 22, or the following Friday, August 29:

The suggested dates raised some eyebrows: why announce on a Friday (particularly the latter date, which would be the Friday before the three-day Labor Day weekend?) However, such a decision would not be unprecedented: when NASA announced the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) awards in August 2012, they also did so on a Friday—the Friday before NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover landed on the Red Planet!

Three companies—Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp., and SpaceX—are the leading contenders for the CCtCap contracts. Lurio also said he expected NASA to make two “full” awards, rather than one full-sized award and a “half-sized” award that would be enough to allow that company to continue development, albeit as a slower pace:

NASA officials have not indicated a specific date for the CCtCap contract announcement, beyond that it would be in the “August-September” timeframe. “Our progress on commercial crew source selection deliberations has been evidently better than we anticipated,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a presentation to the NASA Advisory Council July 30. He said that those awards would come “much sooner than later this year,” but was not more specific.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday it has awarded study contracts to three teams, representing a mix of established and entrepreneurial space companies, to study concepts for a reusable suborbital spaceplane.

DARPA said [...]]]>

Boeing’s concept for the XS-1 spaceplane, one of three selected by DARPA for Phase 1 studies. (credit: Boeing)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday it has awarded study contracts to three teams, representing a mix of established and entrepreneurial space companies, to study concepts for a reusable suborbital spaceplane.

DARPA said it awarded contracts to three teams: Boeing, working with Blue Origin; Masten Space Systems, working with XCOR Aerospace; and Northrop Grumman, working with Virgin Galactic. The contracts, for phase one of the Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) program, cover initial design work on concepts for the vehicle, designed to serve as a reusable lower stage of a low-cost launch system for medium-sized satellites.

“We chose performers who could prudently integrate existing and up-and-coming technologies and operations, while making XS-1 as reliable, easy-to-use and cost-effective as possible,” said DARPA XS-1 program manager Jess Sponable in a DARPA statement announcing the contracts. “We’re eager to see how their initial designs envision making spaceflight commonplace—with all the potential military, civilian and commercial benefits that capability would provide.”

The DARPA statement did not reveal the size of the contracts. However, DARPA has earlier announced, though a Federal Business Opportunities posting, a contract award to Masten valued at just under $3 million. Boeing, in its own press release about the contract, said its contract was valued at $4 million, although it wasn’t clear if that included any award to Blue Origin.

Boeing also released an illustration of its XS-1 concept, a winged vehicle. “Boeing brings a combination of proven experience in developing launch systems and reusable space vehicles, along with unparalleled expertise in the development and fielding of highly operable and cost-effective transportation systems,” said Steve Johnston, director of Boeing’s Phantom Works Advanced Space Exploration division, in the Boeing release.

The goal of the XS-1 program is to develop a vehicle capable of flying ten times in ten days, including at one least one flight to Mach 10. The XS-1, coupled with an expendable upper stage, would be able to launch satellites weighing up to about 2,270 kilograms into low Earth orbit for no more than $5 million a flight. The vehicle could also serve as hypersonics technology testbed. DARPA will select a company in a Phase 2 some time next year to build the XS-1.

With a decision on the next phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program expected as soon as next month, companies with funded awards from the program’s current [...]]]>

Illustration of the Dream Chaser spacecraft in orbit. Sierra Nevada Corporation recently completed the tenth milestone, of thirteen, in its current Space Act Agreement with NASA. (credit: SNC)

With a decision on the next phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program expected as soon as next month, companies with funded awards from the program’s current phase, Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap), are approaching some of the final milestones of those agreements. For at least two of the companies, though, those efforts may not be done until next year.

On Tuesday, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced the completion of the latest milestone of its CCiCap award, a risk reduction program for the main propulsion system and reaction control system (RCS) for its Dream Chaser vehicle. The main propulsion system is a hybrid rocket motor developed at SNC, similar to technology it provided for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (although Virgin is now going with an alternative fuel for SS2.) Dream Chaser’s RCS is being provided by ORBITEC, a company SNC announced last month it is acquiring. SNC didn’t disclose the monetary value of the milestone, but did state that it is the tenth of thirteen milestones SNC has completed under its CCiCap agreement.

United Launch Alliance (ULA), meanwhile, announced Monday that it recently completed a critical design review (CDR) for the facilities at the Atlas V launch site in Florida that would be used by Boeing’s CST-100. This includes a crew access tower, arm, and “white room” that CST-100 crewmembers would use to access the spacecraft atop its Atlas V launcher at Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape. Both Boeing and SNC have said that they plan to launch their spacecraft on Atlas V rockets, but the ULA announcement only refers to accommodating the CST-100. While the CDR is part of Boeing’s preparatory activities for the CST-100 program, it does not appear to be an explicit CCiCap milestone.

According to the latest “Return on Investment” newsletter issued by the NASA Commercial Crew Program office, Boeing has completed 18 of 20 milestones in its CCiCap award, SNC has completed 10 of 13, and SpaceX has completed 13 of 18. Boeing is expected to complete its final two milestones, a spacecraft CDR and a safety review, in the near future. Upcoming milestones for SNC, according to the NASA report, include “risk reduction and technology readiness level advancement testing” and a incremental test of the Dream Chaser RCS. SpaceX’s next milestone is the qualification of Dragon’s primary structure.

While the companies have completed most of their milestones, NASA is giving SNC and SpaceX more time to complete their remaining milestones. NASA is extending the terms of the Space Act Agreements with those companies until March 2015 to allow SpaceX to complete an in-flight Dragon abort test and SNC to perform a free flight test of Dream Chaser.

Those three companies are awaiting NASA’s decisions on contracts for the next phase of the program, Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). NASA expects to make awards in August or September, in the form or one or more fixed-price contracts. Previous phases of the program used funded Space Act Agreements.

[ Second in a series of posts about the companies that won and lost in NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) competition ]

Boeing received the largest of the three CCiCap awards, at $460 million. That award covers 19 milestones and culminates in April 2014 with [...]]]>

Illustration of Boeing’s proposed CST-100 commercial crew capsule.

[ Second in a series of posts about the companies that won and lost in NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) competition ]

Boeing received the largest of the three CCiCap awards, at $460 million. That award covers 19 milestones and culminates in April 2014 with a critical design review (CDR). The work included in the agreement covers both CST-100 spacecraft tests as well as work on the Atlas V launch vehicle that will carry it, such as development of a dual-engine Centaur booster stage and tests of the rocket’s emergency detection system.

As you might expect, Boeing officials were pleased with the award. “We’re really excited about today’s announcement,” John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space Exploration, said in a conference call Friday morning. “We certainly appreciate the confidence expressed by NASA in selecting us for the next phase of commercial crew development.”

One thing that sets Boeing’s bid apart, company officials said, was the breadth of capabilities at Boeing overall, including in its much larger aircraft business units. “One thing that we have really been aggressive at is looking across Boeing,” said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of commercial programs within Boeing Space Exploration. “We have been able to bring in innovative approaches to the workflow, to our design. So from across Boeing we have been getting help on being able to incorporate innovative approaches to make our team and our product more efficient.”

Most of the work that Boeing will do under the CCiCap award will be to mature the design from the preliminary design review phase, which it completed under its previous commercial crew award, to the CDR. “We’re taking all the subsystems through design maturation, which includes across-the-board development tests,” said Mulholland. “Along the way we’ll be doing a number of risk-reduction tests.”

Boeing’s award was only slightly modified from what the company proposed in order to bring the total value down from $500 million, Mulholland said. “We were able to minimize any schedule slip” from reworking the milestones, he said. Boeing moved the completion of its structural test article out by about four months—the only milestone it changed—while keeping the CDR, the major goal of the overall CCiCap program, on schedule.

The CCiCap award keeps Boeing on track to be able to do a crewed flight test in late 2016, pending future funding to continue development beyond CDR. If they stay on schedule, that will take place 100 years after Bill Boeing founded the company that bears his name. “We have learned a lot over that time, and we’re applying that knowledge to commercial crew,” Elbon said. “It would be really sweet to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the company with the first crewed flight of the CST-100. It excited me a bit to think about that.”